The Favoured
by Cha Oseye Tempest Thrain
Summary: How had this happened? At what point did DiNozzo waltz away with the MVP award?


**Disclaimer:** I own neither NCIS nor the characters involved. This is for entertainment purposes only, I make no money.

**Spoilers:** Twilight

**Credits:**Thank you to Kate98, my lovely and amazing beta.

**Author's Note**: Previously published on livejournal's NCIS flashfiction archive.

** The Favoured  
**

The sharp blade bit and scraped, shaving a golden curl away from the whole, evening things out, bringing them closer to perfection. The air had the clean, fresh smell of newly hewn wood and the plane glided across the surface of the plank almost effortlessly. But it felt wrong. All of it.

_Kate_. How foolish to think that she should be the one to keep him safe. Ari wanted them both damaged – how better to hurt Gibbs than to take away one of his people, right under his nose? And yet…

He replayed the scene again, reliving the feelings and the thoughts. They weren't what people thought, weren't what he'd ever admit.

The first response had been shock. A natural reaction to a sudden event, the realisation that Death was close-by and hunting. The third had been anger, at Ari for daring to defy him, at himself for not thinking of the possibility. It was the emotion in between, the thoughts he'd held for a split second. They had to be wrong.

_Relief_. Natural, had the relief been for his own life. A soldier's emotion, the understanding that despite the odds you were lucky enough to make it. But it hadn't. He'd thanked God in that brief instant that if he had to lose one, that it wasn't the other.

_That_ was wrong. _Given the choice_… given the choice, he'd give up neither, but _forced_ to choose… Gibbs sighed. Who would have thought? Who would have thought that DiNozzo would last ten seconds at NCIS? The guy was a non-conformist, pain-in-the-ass who never stayed anywhere long enough to start paying into the pension plan. He was hyperactive, immature and had no sense of discipline. Yet somehow, if Gibbs had to trim his team down to one, the shortlist would have only Tony's name on it.

_How?_ How had this happened? At what point did DiNozzo waltz away with the MVP award?

It didn't make sense unless you knew the guy, really knew him. Not the crazy-stupid image Tony was so good at projecting – so good that even Gibbs believed it sometimes – but the Tony DiNozzo that peeked out from underneath.

_Trust_. He could trust DiNozzo. Oh, the guy could be wrong-headed at times, but his ethics were second-to-none. Not in a whiny, 'you shouldn't do that' sort of way, but where it _counted_. DiNozzo always knew what was at stake and he'd break his own heart to have Justice come out on top.

Or maybe it was something else. Maybe it was the way Tony sometimes followed him home, hanging back where he thought he wouldn't be noticed and watching from the shadows until he seemed certain Gibbs was safely asleep. It would be disturbing if you didn't know why, if you didn't know the history and couldn't spot the pattern. Not a crazy person's pattern at all, but a _cop's _pattern. _Suicide watch_. No one else ever bothered. They trusted Gibbs to be the one to stay sane. DiNozzo didn't trust. That was something Kate had never understood. She worried and twisted her fingers, and _talked_about her worry, as though talking would accomplish something. DiNozzo, on the other hand, was smarter about it. He didn't waste time with words, he just _did._

_Faith._ Not the faith Kate claimed to hold, in God and Church… DiNozzo had faith where it mattered. Gibbs snorted slightly. How many people could you _order_ to stay alive, and count on it happening? Most people would take it as bullshit, and wishful thinking, but Tony _believed_. Someone he trusted with his life said that he would not die, so he didn't.

Not that DiNozzo was simple or stupid. He pretended to be, actions born of long-held habit. And Gibbs played along, never betraying the truth or the fact that even he knew it. Tony's little black notebook served mostly as a prop. The notes were 'just in cases', just in case something happened to him and someone else had to retrace his steps. DiNozzo could remember details from conversations months before – sometimes even whole conversations, verbatim. He was like one of those people who read something and never forgot it, only with DiNozzo the talent was pure audio.

_His best work…_ Late at night, with no distractions and no one to see him talking to himself. No one to snicker because 'Tony's lips move when he reads.' No one to engage him in conversation – he had to work to keep his ghosts from haunting him, he couldn't rely on conversations to keep them at bay. And the man had his ghosts, maybe even more ghosts than Gibbs himself, far more ghosts than someone that age should accumulate.

_NCIS. Land of the law-enforcement screw-ups_. DiNozzo had been a half-step away from total burnout by the time Gibbs got hold of him, barely thirty and already on his way out. You could still see it sometimes, deep down in his eyes when he dropped the guard, on days when the smile never quite completed itself, when the idiocy seemed forced. Days like those first few back from the plague, teetering on the edge of emotional collapse. Days like…

Gibbs climbed up the stairs from the basement and peered out the window and at the shadow that didn't quite fit in the bushes. Ducky would kill the man if he knew he was out here. But some things even Ducky didn't know, and not all personal risks were purely physical.

"Good night, DiNozzo." Gibbs switched off the lights. _"Better you than m_e" an old Marine friend had once commented, catching DiNozzo's antics and shaking his head. He spared another look through the glass, watching the watcher, his self-appointed guardian angel. _You should be so lucky_.


End file.
